Merkel Turns To Africa To Curb Mass Migrant Flow

BERLIN, , (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Oct, 2016 ) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday wrapped up a week of Africa diplomacy aimed at slowing the flow of migrants to Europe from a continent battered by conflict and poverty.

She hosted Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, having also met Chad's head of state Idriss Deby two days earlier following a three-day whirlwind tour of Mali, Niger and Ethiopia, the seat of the African Union.

As Germany, Europe's top destination for people fleeing war and misery, looks to chair the G20 next year, she has pledged to step up efforts to help Africa and fight the causes of the mass migration.

"I think we will need to take a vastly greater interest in the destiny of Africa," Merkel said at the start of her first major Africa trip in five years. "The well-being of Africa is in Germany's interest.

" Data backs up that notion -- while most asylum-seekers in Germany so far this year came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, Germany has also taken in over 13,000 Eritreans and thousands from other African countries.

More than 10,000 came from Nigeria, the oil-rich economic giant now grappling with a plunge in crude prices and the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency that has claimed over 20,000 lives and spilled into Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

At a joint press conference with Buhari, Merkel stressed support for the country's battle against Boko Haram, but also said that Germany would send back most Nigerians. She said that while most refugees from war zones like Syria were granted asylum, "the approval rate for people from Nigeria is only eight percent. We presume that most of them came for economic reasons."